Crooked House is the first Agatha Christie mystery novel I have read. Every chapter throws a new twist, and the mystery isn't solved until the very last chapter. I strongly recommend this book as it is very entertaining and definitely keeps you at the edge of your seat.

I would compare this story to "Murder on the Orient Express" for the final twist, although in this case the final revelation is definitely more shocking. Agatha Christie is a fine connoisseur of human psychology and here she is at her best. The characters are all believable and we keep on wondering until the end. Christie is one of my favorite writers and I recommend this book to everyone, just be warned: nothing is what it seems!

I think this is one of Agatha Christie's best mysteries. I was completely swept up in the story, and was quite surprised by the ending. I thought that she did a really good job of bringing all the characters to life, adding detail and "fleshing them out" much more than in most of her mysteries. Even the dead man has quite a personality! Although the mystery setup is familiar, the atmosphere seems even more charged with fear and suspicion, perhaps because the narrator is in the house quite a bit and engaged to the granddaughter of the deceased. I thought it was interesting that Agatha Christie writes in her forward to this book that it is one of her personal favorites, a pleasure to write and a book that she felt was one of her best.
*Spoiler alert* I was shocked that the young girl was able to murder without remorse or more contemplation than "He won't let me go to ballet lessons" or "She gets annoyed and scolds me frequently". However, since I have read "The Sociopath Next Door" (great book!) multiple times, it sounds like she is definitely a sociopath/ psychopath. If she is this good at killing people, hiding her tracks and throwing suspicion elsewhere at a young age, it seems inevitable that she would just continue doing that and worse as she got older and smarter. I thought it was interesting that at the end, there was some suggestion that the grandfather may have realized that something was "different" with her and that's why she had a tutor at home instead of going to school. That decision would have increased the safety of her would-be schoolmates, but did not change her in any fundamental way. I am not sure that there is any way that she could have been changed if she really was a sociopath since (according to the other book) sociopaths don't think anything is wrong with them and are unable to empathize and form connections with other people. I don't know if there would have been any way the family could have kept Josephine's murderous ways under control. I don't agree with her great-aunt taking her own life and Josephine's, however that was probably the easiest way to have a relatively tidy ending to the story. (one of the reasons that I enjoy Agatha Christie) : )

This Agatha Christie novel captured my attention quickly. The rich patriarch of a dysfunctional family has been poisoned. Many family members are suspect. As usual, the suspense builds to an unexpected conclusion.

In the forward to her 1949 stand-alone mystery “Crooked House,” Agatha Christie calls it one of her “special favourites,” and writes in her autobiography that it is one of the two that “satisfy me best.” This is interesting because the novel does not feature Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, or any of her other series detectives. In fact, the classic detective is largely absent from this mystery, as the reader is left along with narrator Charles Hayward to try to solve this exceptionally cunning mystery. Christie is always scrupulously fair about the mystery, and lays a trail of clues for those who have the eyes to see. The climax to “Crooked House” features a classic Christie turnabout of the “I-never-saw-this-coming” variety. And you’re led to believe that in fact no one has “solved” the crime at all…until you read the last sentence of the novel. You can see why this was one of her favourites.